The writer that most inspired my early writing is Michael Crichton. He's the main reason why I do so much research on things before writing about them, and his clear prose style has an influence you can see even now.

Since then, I've borrowed a bit from other role players here and there. It happened a lot more often when I was new to role playing and there were a lot of people who wrote better than I did. I'd pick up on what made their posts better than mine and do my best to match them.

As I got better, there were fewer people to learn from. Moreover, you get to a point where you need to learn what resides [i]behind [/i]the words to become a better writer. Things like what types of characters work well together, how to set up plot threads, and stuff like that. It's more than just being a good writer though, since not all of that stuff translates perfectly to being a good role player. In that regard, I learned a lot from reading the opinions of critics. To which there were too many to count. I also had the pleasure of having a retired marvel editor (Eliot Brown) Look over some of my short stories and tell me about the sort of stuff I was doing wrong.  A humbling experience to be sure, but also an important milestone for my writing.

It's sort of a nebulous answer, but that's where I'm at.

Going into the new year, I would like to read more books. I tend to do a lot of reading, but it's seldom something like a novel or long story. We'll see I guess.